Tackle malnutrition in the elderly to save the NHS and social care £15 billion a year

22 January 2018

A cross-party group of MPs and Peers today issues a rallying
call to the Government, to look more closely at the problem of malnutrition in
the elderly which is set to cost the NHS and social care £15.7 billion a year
by 2030.

The MPs and Peers find that:

- Despite a continued reduction in absolute
poverty amongst pensioners, over a million older people are likely to be
malnourished or at risk of malnutrition.
- The main causes of this malnutrition are
loneliness and isolation, often brought about by a string of setbacks such as
bereavement, illness, shop closures and a loss of community transport or Meals
on Wheels.
- The estimated annual cost of this malnutrition
to our country’s health and social care services is £11.9 billion. This sum
will increase to £13 billion in 2020, and again to £15.7 billion by 2030.
Malnourished older people are more vulnerable to accidents and ill health, for
example, and are also more likely to take longer to recover or heal.
- Targeted investment in services which protect
older people from malnutrition would deliver significant annual savings to the
NHS, not least by reducing the number of hospital admissions and limiting the
number of days older people spend in hospital.

Among the key recommendations to the Government are:

- Public Health should be tasked with publishing
data on the extent of malnutrition in the elderly.
- Screening tools should be used at all levels of
care, to identify and subsequently treat in the community as many older people
as possible who are either malnourished or at risk of being so.
- A reallocation of existing expenditure on
pensioners should be considered, in which Winter Fuel Payments are withdrawn
from the richest pensioners and invested in innovative community projects which
protect older people from malnutrition by ensuring that, for example, they eat
at least one hot meal per day.

The group also calls on Britain’s biggest supermarkets to
open up a new front in the battle against malnutrition amongst older people.
Three reforms, in particular, would move us onto the front foot in this battle:

- The provision during set times of the week of
assisted shopping, including ‘slow’ or ‘relaxed’ checkout lanes, so that older
people can continue to shop independently for the food they wish to eat
- Accompanying those shopping sessions with a
lunch club in the in-store café area
- Subsidising the community travel that older
people will require to get to the supermarket, both to buy their shopping and
to attend the lunch club

Commenting on the report, the group’s chair, Frank Field MP,
says: ‘Hidden beneath the radar, there are malnourished older people in this
country spending two or three months withering away in their own homes, with
some entering hospital weighing five and a half stone with an infection, or
following a fall, which keeps them there for several tortuous days, if not
weeks.

‘The elimination of malnutrition amongst older people
is urgently required for the sake of the NHS, and social care services, but
above all for purposes of humaneness. Hence our central recommendation in this
report, for a series of innovative pilot schemes that feed and care for older
people.’

A copy of the report, Hidden
hunger and malnutrition in the elderly, published by officers of the
All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger, can be found here.